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| Medal of Honor Airborne |
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| Shooters |
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| Electronic Arts |
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| Electronic Arts |
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31st August 07 |
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27th August 07 |
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N/A |
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N/A |
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Medal of Honour is back and although famed hero Jimmy Paterson doesn’t feature we assume the role of a Para-Trooper named Boyd Travers. A demo was recently released and Wayne, Lee and I put the game through its paces.
Medal of Honour: Airborne is a standard World War II shooter that has a nifty take on the genre. What separates this game from its peers is the fact that during the opening of missions and in this case “Infinite Mischief” players are able to drop down into the fight and land pretty much anywhere in the battlefield. This means players can plan their attacks and make the dangerous choice as to where they are going to start and finish the fight! The demo thrusts you into a mission where you have to take out several well guarded anti aircraft guns and as Travers it’s your job to get in there and help the other troops complete these objectives.
Rob:
To begin and on a plus point I really like the open battlefield idea and although this is nothing new, the dropping in from the air is quite a unique feature. The controlling of the parachute is pretty tough and it’s obvious the game doesn’t allow you to land in certain areas around the outskirts of the map. I found that it’s quite tough to land correctly which gives you the bonus of not fumbling around for valuable seconds once you land.
Once you have landed then the gameplay is pretty standard fare as you duck in and out of cover shooting at Germans; although with the openness of the map means you can sneak around, find alternate routes or snipe from high points such as on rooftops on in buildings. What is nice is being able to join skirmishes and follow the paths of the rest of the unit who don’t seem to progress without your input – unrealistic yes, but keeps things interesting for the player.
The combat as mentioned is pretty standard although I do like the fact that when using the Iron Sights you can lean in all directions. This is pretty good and allows you to perform some decent shots on enemies who are behind cover also. Weapons also level up in the game so to speak; so if you use the rifle a lot you will eventually become better at using it. There’s an outline image of the gun you are using which fills up with a blue colour as you kill enemies. Once filled you get the bonus such as fore-grip for stability thus increasing your aim. I like this feature especially as you lose the bonus should you get killed. There are three bonuses for each weapon and I guess the trick is being able to stay alive long enough to get them all. Sadly the demo is way too easy to complete and thus probably pretty tough to max out more than one weapon. I did try and managed to max out one of the rifles which gave me award 1- increased accuracy, award 2 – single clip+ faster reload, award - 3 grenade launcher.
Now the negative. The AI is pretty terrible as the Germans have no clue about protecting themselves as they run out into the open or simply unnecessarily go for a mounted gun emplacement even though they can’t shoot you due to the angle you are at. I also noticed a distinct lack of grenades being thrown by the enemy which is a shame. There are plenty of glitches with the graphics here and some of the death animations are laughable. At one point I saw a head simply stuck in midair with the body twisted around 180 degrees. Ok it’s a demo and so hopefully these sorts of glitches will be fixed however the AI needs a lot of work if it is to be challenging and fun. Playing on Hard mode didn’t really add anything to the experience either.
The controls take a little getting used to especially as they feel somewhat sluggish but after a while you get used to it and it seems fairly natural. The hit detection is pretty poor especially as weapons feel really weak compared to other WWII games. I guess this also isn’t helped by the fact that when shot the enemy reactions are pretty weak – in fact non existent as far as I could tell.
MOH: Airborne is going to be a decent WWII shooter based on the demo but one that isn’t going to be winning any awards due to the distinct lack of polish. I know this is just a demo but surely EA must realise that most gamers are going to make a judgement based upon it so there really is no excuse for having a sloppy showcase. MOH: Airborne has promise but I doubt it will resolve all of the issues I have with the game before it’s released. EA surprise me why don’t you!
Wayne:
As time has passed by I have been looking for my next WWII fix since Call of Duty 2; there have been only a handful of these games in this genre since then. Now that Infinity Ward is set to take the Call of Duty series to modern times, with the impressive looking Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which releases this November. It's time to stand up and look for what else can take us back to the World War II era and the two most notable titles releasing this year are Brother in Arms: Hell's Highway and of course, Medal of Honour: Airborne.
This is actually my first time playing a Medal of Honour game, at least that I can remember. Upon firing up the demo and having a short mission briefing the next scene shows you in a plane and this in its self was quite impressive. This will likely be due to the claustrophobic environment and of course being in such a confined space helps you to notice and appreciate the finer details as well as the audio with bombs and gun fire going off in the background.
In Airborne you play as Travers and as you leap from battered plane and begin your descent into the battlefield, you must try and look for a safe space to land. While controlling the parachute can be awkward the important thing is of course, the main controls on the ground. Sadly this is where the game failed miserably. Anyone that plays lots of shooters gets used to specific controls over time and everything just seemed butt-backwards and as a result was certainly awkward to play and control.
I decided to come back to the game later and this time, I fared much better in my mission objectives. The reason for this is that the game allows you to change from the default controls to two different control schemes. Luckily after checking out these options I found that Control Scheme 2 was fairly "Halo-esque' with only a few differences which are certainly much easier to get used to than completely having everything different. As I've not played a Medal of Honour game before I have no idea if the controls were like this in previous games in the series, but I certainly think Control Scheme 2 should be the default setting for the retail release of the game.
Anyway, with that out of the way I was able to proceed through the game and this time around I actually enjoyed it. There are several features I noticed which I haven't seen in other recent shooters before, the main one for me is the way you can control your movement with the left analogue stick when scoped in with a gun. Aiming is as per usual with the right analogue stick, though when scoped in the left analogue stick is extremely useful as it allows you to peek around corners and when crouched behind cover you can easily move the left analogue stick up to move up ever so slightly and pick targets off from behind cover.
The A.I. at times seemed rather flaky, which is a shame as now I have the controls “sussed” I want to be immersed into the game. Sadly I cannot be immersed and "believe" that I'm in World War II, especially when I throw a grenade at the enemy, who then runs away from the grenade but then does a 180 and runs right back into in time for the big explosion. Who knows, perhaps it's clever A.I. maybe he knew I was going to kill him anyway?
The demo dishes out multiple targets at a time and it's up to you which route and which objective you go to first, which I like as it gives a sense of freedom to the environment without any of those annoying sandbags or invisible walls which you can not get past. What is a very nice touch is how your comrades move in within your vicinity from different angles. These include friendly soldiers coming from various buildings around you and the most eye-catching are fellow paratroopers coming from the sky up above and landing ever so swiftly to join in the firefight.
Medal of Honour: Airborne now officially has my attention. No, it's not great and it kind of seems dated but it brings very few new things to the table, but these are important things never the less. The most important thing is that a game plays well, which it does and I look forward to playing what could potentially be a fairly good game and as it's an EA game, we may be lucky enough to have some incredibly easy Achievements too.
I do not think Medal of Honour: Airborne is the next best World War II first person shooter experience, but from what I have played I was suitably impressed and look forward to the game’s release in a few weeks time.
Lee:
Now, where to start. This game for me was a mix of impressions, before the game and as I was playing it. EA isn't one for producing the best of games and the Medal of Honour (or Medal of Honor as the Americans say) series, ever since the first two which were released on the Playstation, haven't brought anything new to the table. So, when I opened up the first trailer for this game I wasn't expecting anything different. To my surprise however, it actually looked like they thought this one out; being able to control your path in a mission and parachute to your own position in the map, is a shocking break from EA's stack of linear & cliched gameplay routines.
Playing the demo itself however brought back some dire memories. The graphics were ok, the low texture resolution was well hidden with the amount of pretty special effects such as the lighting and shaders (which you'll expect in any modern game now) and the animations, although jumpy at times were quite well implemented. For example, when you land you really feel like you've landed, as the speed you fall and how you maneuver your character effects how you will land when you hit the ground; and this may be with a thud and a stumble to your feet or a perfect landing and a quick cut of the cord. This is also rated by the game, which doesn't seem to make a difference but where you land does and this is what makes MOH:Airborne unique.
The first person shooting gameplay itself on the other hand, I found to be very sluggish and messy. The actual actions your character makes, and options that are given, are no different to any other WWII game like Call of Duty, and yet the controls seem so much more complicated. For example, you can lean left and right but you can only do this when using your iron sights, and throwing your grenades are separate to your weapon changes, which doesn't seem so bad when you put it in words, but when your in an intense firefight things can get really dodgy. The interface is quite cluttered as well so anyone with a smaller screen you're going to find it a bit harder to play this game, and many of the weapons sounds don't really sound like weapons, but more like cap guns. This doesn't matter too much however as you can tell EA haven't gone for the realistic approach. I figured this out when I started to matrix (bullet time) shoot Germans unexpectedly which happened to be part of the weapon upgrade system which EA have kindly added to make it stick out from other similar games. Personally, I like a more authentic approach when it comes to a WWII game but because this is my own personal opinion I won't call this a fault.
The AI had its moments also, the Germans and your Allies will do some clever things which will make you smile, then they may do some twitchy/weird things which will make you cry. This could be from the amazing ability of shooting through walls or to generally being complete idiots and never noticing that you're there, this happens with the Germans and your Allies, but a little polishing from the developers could well fix this problem and many of the others that I have mentioned (as it is just a demo). Looking beyond the noticeable but fixable faults within the demo, if these were fixed then MOH: Airborne could and should work. The general idea does work really well as I witnessed from the demo, but if certain changes aren't made and EA don't support the game after the release date, then I don't see this being any more than a rent.
Preview By: Robert Cram
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